Tag: Crags
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The Wainstones
Pronounced ‘wean‘ or ‘wearn‘ in the local dialect. The familiar jumble of Bajocian sandstone crags and boulders at the western end of Hasty Bank. Much loved by the climbing fraternity and long distance walkers on the Coast-to-Coast, The Cleveland Way and the Lyke Wake Walk. Opposite the col, Garfitt Gap, is Cold Moor or ‘Caudmer‘.…
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The Wainstones
I was heading down a proverbial rabbit hole this afternoon when I stumbled across this little snippet from the York Herald, 25 Aug. 1849: “Gipsy” Party. — On Thursday week, a company from Bilsdale assembled on Wainstone-nab, intending to hold a “Gipsy” party on its summit. Wainstone-nab is a hill which overlooks the village of…
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Furthering the Right to Roam
Today is the anniversary of the Mass Trespass of 1932, when four to five hundred ramblers climbed Kinder Scout in the Peak District in defiance of the restrictions on access at the time. Their aim was to establish a public right of access onto the moors that were privately owned for grouse shooting. The movement…
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A wet and wild Wainstones
What more is there to say? Perhaps a poem, a sonnet in fact, written in flowery Victorian language but titled quite simply “The Wainstones, Broughton Bank” From early youth, to more than three-score years, I’ve loved to climb the mountain on which stand The rugged WAINSTONES; or on every hand Are scenes of beauty; Cleveland…
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Garfit Gap
Popped up Hasty Bank and Cold Moor for an amble around. A pleasant morning, loads of walkers on the Cleveland Way. This is Garfit Buttress, the south-western end of the outcrop of sandstone crags known as the Wainstones. Overlooking Garfit Gap towards Cold Moor. A view I’ve looked at many times, yet fresh every time.…
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Rank Crag
Exploring the head of Scugdale. A distinct line of crags and broken ground at around the 310m contour, the same height as the nick on Stoney Ridge above Holy Well Gill on the southern edge of Scugdale. A coincidence? Maybe not. Between 26,000 and 10,000 years ago during the last ice age, a great glacier…
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Cold Moor from The Wainstones
One of my main sources of knowledge and inspiration is Frank Elgee’s 1912 book The Moorlands of North Eastern Yorkshire. Elgee was born in 1880 and was a distinguished writer of the geology, archaeology and natural history of the North York Moors. Largely self-taught, he was the curator of the Dorman Museum in Middlesbrough from…
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Laddow Rocks
Ewan MacColl, in his Manchester Rambler, famously sang that he had slept upon Crowden. But Crowden seems to be the name of the hamlet at the foot of Crowden Brook. I can’t find a moor or hill named Crowden. Perhaps he meant Laddow Rocks, a range of gritstone crags overlooking Crowden Great Brook. When MacColl…
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View from the Cheshire Stone
And a fine view it is on a lovely morning. So easy to pooh-pooh the dire weather forecast. The large basin on the flat sandstone top does not look natural but no doubt it is. And judging by the rate of erosion of prehistoric rock art on sandstone boulders elsewhere on the North York Moors…
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Raven’s Scar
A north facing sandstone crag overlooking Great Broughton on Hasty Bank. On the 1857 map named as Baven’s Scar which I think must have been an error. Open Space Web-Map builder Code